News

RIM show off more of BlackBerry 10 ay BlackBerry Jam Americas

BlackBerry®Jam Americas 2012, formerly the BlackBerry Developer Conference, has kicked off on September 25 in San Jose, California.  The conference is a showcase for the bold, new direction BlackBerry is heading with the upcoming BlackBerry® 10 platform. The flow of ideas, passion for the platform, and drive to succeed is in full display at the conference.

During his keynote, Thorsten Heins, Chief Executive Officer at Research In Motion (RIM), clearly demonstrated that the company is delivering on its vision for BlackBerry 10 to a global audience of partners and developers.  More sneak peeks of BlackBerry 10 were also shared.

BlackBerry 10 is designed to make users more productive and more efficient.  With Flow, which is at the core of BlackBerry 10, home buttons are gone and there is no need to exit an app to open a new one.  Users can move easily from task to task, and check in on their conversations, wherever they may be. With BlackBerry 10, RIM is expanding its leadership in communications, NFC, mobile social media, as well as collaboration in the enterprise.

You may want to check out the video below where Vivek Bhardwaj of the BlackBerry 10 product team shows off a few new features of the OS. It’s impressive stuff.

It’s iPhone 5 Friday

Today is the day many of you have been waiting for – it is iPhone 5 Friday!  We already know that pre-orders of Apples new iPhone have been huge and it will be interesting to also see what retail sales are like over the weekend and if stores have enough stock, I suspect they won’t!
So if you are still in two minds whether to commit to the iPhone 5 or not you can find below the links to the major UK networks to get your order in online. I can’t say how long you will have to wait for one as clearly all pre-orders will ship first but I wish you luck.

Orange iPhone 5
T-Mobile iPhone 5
Three iPhone 5
Vodafone iPhone 5
O2 iPhone 5

Posted by: James

Clove announce pricing for the two new HTC Windows Phone 8 devices

Although the HTC 8S and 8X won’t be available until November Clove have today published the prices of the two new Windows Phone 8 handsets and although you can’t actually pre-order you can register your interest with them and you will be notified via email nearer the time.

The HTC 8X will set you back £399.98 including VAT and the 8S will be a fair bit cheaper at £224.99 which seems pretty good value to me.

Head on over to Clove for the full run down of the devices. They will look after you. Nice guys.

Posted by: James

iPhone 5 specs and design

Unless you were asleep yesterday you will be aware that Apple announced the iPhone 5. If you are planning to get one, and i’m sure one or two of you may here’s the run down of the full specs.

On a personal note – I wasn’t particually excited with the resuluts. Yes, it is bigger but it is still an iPhone. I shall be holding off getting one in anticipation for BlackBerry 10 in Q1 2013. Matt will get the iPhone though so expect his full review in the coming weeks.

EE 4G LTE Speed Test

Yesterday saw the launch of EE’s 4G LTE roll out and at the press event in London I got to go hands on with a few of the 4G supported handsets. Just in case you were wondering how fast LTE can be watch this video. Pretty awesome!

Posted by: James

Fighting fire with fire Samsung Vs Apple

According to a late breaking story from last night, Samsung isn’t messing around with their counter-attack on Apple. Insider sources are claiming, Samsung will sue Apple for violating its LTE patents with the iPhone 5 just as the phone is announced tomorrow. Here’s the quote,

Quote:

"It’s true that Samsung Electronics has decided to take immediate legal action against the Cupertino-based Apple. Countries in Europe and even the United States ? Apple’s home-turf ? are our primary targets,” said an industry source.

Get the ultimate screen protection from Expansys

Looking for the ultimate screen protector for your smartphone? Expansys may well have the answer with Crystalusion Liquid Galss.

Layer your tech in Liquid Glass for cutting edge protection: Crystalusion Liquid Glass is a futuristic and effective way of protecting your smartphone, laptop, tablet, iPod, PSP or PC monitor. Using nanotechnology, it provides a resistive layer that protects coated surfaces from dirt, oil, dust, abrasion and bacteria for up to 12 months. Rather than a solid layer of plastic it is actually a liquid that you wipe onto your device. This then sets, in a matter of minutes, to form a protective layer that is approximately 500 times thinner than a human hair. As it’s a liquid there won’t be any annoying bubbles that form and you can apply it to the whole of your device for all round protection. You can even use it for your sunglasses, goggles or glasses all for the great price of only £6.99.

So what are the benefits of Crystalusion  Liquid Glass? Well, when it comes to protecting your AV, media or communications device it offers some amazing benefits to protect not only the screen but the entire device!

• Being applied as a liquid it provides bubble-free protection
• Doesn’t impair functionality or vision
• Protection against abrasion
• Can improve the visible appearance of minor hairline scuffs
• Reduces finger marks
• Provides an easy to clean surface
• Gives antimicrobial protection
• Resistant to both acid and alkaline
• Protection against water and humidity (Hydrophobicity)
• Protection against oil and oil based substances (Oleophobicity)

Nokia to debut new Windows Phone 8 devices today

Nokia will be holding a press event later today where we are expected to see the first working Windows Phone 8 device from them. Thanks to recent leaks it would appear that we will get to see the Lumia 920 and 820 in a whole host of colours.

With Nokia’s partnership with Microsoft it will be interesting to see what new features they will be bringing to the platform that wont be available with other manufactures. On the Windows Phone 7.5 devices we clearly had the likes of Nokia Drive and Music, just to name a couple. Will there me more with WP8 I wonder?

We will of course bring you the details later today.

Posted by: James

Download shows to your mobile with BBC iPlayer

Today the BBC have made a new version of their BBC iPlayer App available to iPhone and iPad owners. This new version not only allows them to stream shows to their mobile but also download them to their device to watch later.

Users will be able to save any programme for up to 30 days – but once you hit play, have to finish watching it within a week.

Available on iPhone, iPad and iPod touch devices, the feature will be coming to Android devices soon.

Last month alone there were 30 million requests for iPlayer programmes via a mobile or tablet, according to the BBC.

"With mobile downloads for BBC iPlayer, you can now load up your mobile phone or tablet with hours and hours of BBC television programmes, then watch them on the road, on the Tube, on a plane, without worrying about having an internet connection or running up a mobile data bill," said Daniel Danker, general manager of programmes and on-demand for the BBC.

We understand that ITV are considering adding a similar feature to their app but that they would be charging for it.

Posted by: Matt

HTC Desire X and Xperia J prices announced

The HTC Desire X and Sony Xperia J were announced last week and already we’re able to give you the price and availability of these two new handsets.

SIM free pricing is as follows:

Desire X is due late September, priced at £190 (£228 inc VAT) and due to be available in black and white.

http://www.clove.co.uk/htc-desire-x

Xperia J is due late October, priced at £159 (£190.80 inc. VAT) and also due to be available in black and white.

http://www.clove.co.uk/sony-xperia-j

We’ve also had stock of the AllShare Cast Dongle for the S3 in today, although there’s still no word on when the wireless charger is due to be here unfortunately. 

http://www.clove.co.uk/samsung-allshare-cast-dongle-samsung-galaxy-s3

We are still SIM-free pricing for the Note II, Ativ S and Galaxy Camera, but should have that to follow soon as well.

Posted by: Matt